A Washington judge ordered the Postal Service to conduct a full sweep of facilities in 12 key postal districts to ensure every ballot is delivered before polls close on Election Day.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered the “all clear” of the facilities on Tuesday “between 12:30 p.m. (EST) and 3:00 p.m. (EST) to ensure that no ballots have been held up and that any identified ballots are immediately sent out for delivery,” according to ABC 30.
The districts in question have some of the lowest ballot processing rates and are spread across the country, ranging from the Houston area, central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, northern New England, parts of South Carolina, Wyoming, and southern Florida.
The judge ordered inspectors to report back to the court by 4:30 p.m. to confirm the check was conducted.
The ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought by a number of groups, including Vote Forward and several Latino community groups. The groups claimed that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting measures were disenfranchising minority voters by slowing down mail service. It’s the second order handed down by Sullivan this week pertaining to the Postal Service.
On Sunday, Sullivan mandated that the Postal Service take “extraordinary measures” to address a steady decline in ballot processing in key states. The Postal Service’s processing score declined for five consecutive days as of Tuesday — though a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner those figures are misleading and “not reliable.”
On-time delivery of mail-in ballots is more critical than ever, given the record use of voting by mail across the country this year. More than 100 million votes were already cast as polls began opening on Election Day, nearly three-quarters of the total number of votes cast in 2016. Five states already met or surpassed their total votes cast in the last presidential election: Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Texas, and Washington.
Twenty-eight states will not accept ballots that arrive after Election Day even if they’re postmarked by Tuesday, NBC’s Geoff Bennett tweeted.
Last week, the Postal Service announced it had processed and delivered 122 million ballots.
The Postal Service spokesperson said: “We expect that ballots may move through our system past Election Day, as some states require mail-in ballots to be postmarked by a specific date and received a certain number of days later, while other states require mail-in ballots to be received by the election office by a specified deadline on or before Election Day. USPS continues to process a historic volume of political and election mail this season. The 630,000 women and men of the Postal Service are deeply committed to our longstanding role in the electoral process, and we are actively working to deliver in this election season.”
